Gummy-bear fun offers a taste of science, engineering for girls
The conference at Seattle University encourages middle-school girls to explore science and engineering careers.
Seattle Times staff reporter
Perhaps they could get a job with Sound Transit.
The three-girl team spent just 25 "sweeties" to send their 10 gummy bears on a 24-foot adventure down a suspended fishing line.
Their design of a "mass transit system" for their thumbnail-size gummy riders was a huge success.
And no one minded if they ate some of the passengers.
"We just thought of it," said Gwen Hildebrandt, 12, a student at Islander Middle School on Mercer Island, of their successful design. "I don't think eating them affected the decision at all."
The exercise was "Gummy Bear Engineering," one of 42 sessions offered in a hands-on conference for middle-school girls from around the state, sponsored by Seattle Expanding Your Horizons.
On Saturday, 410 girls attended classes at Seattle University put on by scientists — biologists, botanists, engineers and veterinarians — from around the area.
Hildebrandt and fellow transit engineers Chloe LeComp, from St. John School in Seattle, and Eleanor Williams, from Portland, placed their gummy bears in a paper bag, leaving a window for them. The girls attached the bag to a straw threaded on the fishing line, and taped an inflated balloon to the back. When they released the balloon, the bag sailed down the line to what, at the time, was a record 24 feet.
That drew praise from Mary Margaret Callahan, with the Northwest Girls Coalition, who was leading the exercise. "This was an elegant and simple design. That's what I really like," she said.
Part of the exercise was to keep track of the design costs in the gummy-bear currency of sweeties. The balloon, for instance, cost 15 sweeties, the straw nine. (One crew spent 92 sweeties on their design, said Callahan.)
The conference, which was to encourage girls to explore the world of math, science and computer
